[212] in entire accord with the disposition manifested by the requirement of the provisional Constitution and the resolution of the Congress above recited, for the appointment of a commission to negotiate friendly relations with the United States and an equitable and peaceable settlement of all questions which would necessarily arise under the new relations of the states toward one another. Next to the organization of a cabinet, that of such a commission was accordingly one of the very first objects of attention. Three discreet, well-informed, and distinguished citizens were selected as said commissioners, and accredited to the President of the Northern states, Lincoln, to the end that by negotiation all questions between the two governments might be so adjusted as to avoid war, and perpetuate the kind relations which had been cemented by the common trials, sacrifices, and glories of the people of all the states. If sectional hostility had been engendered by dissimilarity of institutions, and by a mistaken idea of moral responsibilities, and by irreconcilable creeds—if the family could no longer live and grow harmoniously together—by patriarchal teaching older than Christianity, it might have been learned that it was better to part, to part peaceably, and to continue, from one to another, the good offices of neighbors who by sacred memories were forbidden ever to be foes. The nomination of the members of the commission was made on February 25—within a week after my inauguration—and confirmed by Congress on the same day. The commissioners appointed were A. B. Roman of Louisiana, Martin J. Crawford of Georgia, and John Forsyth of Alabama. Roman was an honored citizen and had been governor of his native state; Crawford had served with distinction in Congress for several years; Forsyth was an influential journalist, and had been minister to Mexico under appointment of Pierce near the close of his term, and continued so under that of Buchanan. These gentlemen, moreover, represented the three great parties which had ineffectually opposed the sectionalism of the so-called Republicans. Ex-Governor Roman had been a Whig in former years, and one of the Constitutional Union, or Bell-and-Everett party in the canvass of 1860; Crawford, as a state-rights Democrat, had supported Breckinridge; Forsyth had been a zealous advocate of the claims of Douglas. The composition of the commission was therefore such as should have conciliated the sympathy and cooperation of every element of conservatism with which they might have occasion to deal. Their commissions authorized and empowered them, “in the name of the Confederate States, to meet and confer with any person or persons duly authorized by the Government of the United States, being furnished with like power and authority, and with him or ”
